The Edwardian Manchester

The Edwardian Manchester, formerly the Radisson Blu Edwardian hotel, is a large luxury hotel with 263 guest rooms, all tastefully decorated in earth tones with high-end wooden furnishings.

The standard twin-deluxe and king-deluxe rooms feature large beds, a flat-screen TV and a walk-in wardrobe. The en-suite bathrooms feature Scandinavian slate with a walk-in shower and separate wet and dry zones. Most rooms have lovely city views, although a few look inwards towards the hotel atrium.

There are also several suites including four penthouses on the 14th floor.

Free WiFi access is available throughout the hotel.

The hotel has two high-end restaurants: the Peter Street Kitchen and the Library Champagne Bar plus the underground Sienna Spa with a sauna, steam room and fitness centre plus a 12m deck-level swimming pool, which is available to all guests.

The Peter Street Kitchen is the main restaurant, focusing on modern British cuisine and features high ceilings plus seating facing the street as well as an interior space with columns. As you would expect, The Library Champagne Bar serves champagne, and it is also a nice place to enjoy a traditional English afternoon tea.

The Edwardian Manchester has a great location on Peter Street in the city centre and is only a two-minute walk to the Manchester Central Convention Complex. It is a 10-minute walk to Deansgate and Oxford Road stations and a 15 to 20-minute walk to Manchester Piccadilly or Manchester Victoria stations.

The hotel is housed in the imposing Free Trade Hall, a public hall built on St Peter’s Fields, which was the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, and opened in 1856 to commemorate the repeal of the 1846 Corn Laws. As a public hall, the venue was an important venue for theatre, public meetings and political speeches and Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill have all made speeches or performed here; and the Free Trade Hall was also home to the Hallé Orchestra and was Manchester’s leading concert venue up till the construction of the Bridgewater Hall in 1996. Bob Dylan, the Dubliners, Genesis, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, the Sex Pistols, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Frank Zappa have all played here. The Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel opened here in 2004 after a £45 million renovation.

It is not often that you get the chance to sleep in a building that has been graced by the presence of some of the leading figures of the 20th century and while you cannot fault the standard of accommodation, it does not have the wow factor that you would expect from a five-star hotel in such an iconic building.